Forgiveness for France?
GURFINKIEL, MICHEL
Forgiveness for France? Non. BY MICHEL GURFINKIEL Paris EVERYBODY in the world understood the war in Iraq was effectively over and Saddam Hussein's regime defeated when French foreign minister...
...Higher education is almost entirely state-run: There are virtually no private universities in the country...
...The first is that the Euro-American rift may have derived, at least in part, from an American failure to communicate...
...The economist Jacques Lesourne once said that modern France was a "successful U.S.S.R...
...Berlin was supporting the ousting of Saddam...
...Ninety percent of French ministers, either conservative or socialist, have graduated from the exclusive higher civil service school, the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA...
...America should not overreact...
...A disproportionate number of French CEOs are ENA graduates...
...And on April 2, his foreign minister Joschka Fischer made clear Michel Gurfinkiel is a French essayist and journalist living in Paris...
...The problem is that they should have realized a bit earlier that the United States would go to war and win...
...By this he meant that France is a thoroughly statist country, where a single meritocratic elite (or "state nobility") runs or owns almost everything of substance...
...Why did the same man challenge America on Iraq in such a devastating manner...
...Even the French can tell a winner from a loser...
...The same holds true for Germany...
...One view is that it should instantly welcome the sinners back into the Atlantic fold...
...Chirac's initial reaction after 9/11 may have been to back America, if only to secure a good bargain as far as French interests in the Middle East are concerned...
...But the state nobility as a whole, and large parts of French public opinion, were leaning against America...
...He was the first foreign statesman to visit Ground Zero and the first to meet with President Bush after 9/11...
...What should the United States do about the French and German eleventh-hour conversions...
...As the war started, however, he couldn't bring himself not to allow U.S...
...Supporters of this view make two arguments...
...Moreover, it should be noted that in the case of Afghanistan, he had to overcome the opposition of a reluctant Socialist cabinet, led by Lionel Jospin...
...The share of the state or of the state-related sector in France's GNP was once over 50 percent...
...A sober but stern reaction will help America's erstwhile allies reconsider their positions...
...There is a different view, however, according to which America should not forgive and forget so easily...
...President Jacques Chirac is not fiercely pro-American, but he cannot be described as a rabid anti-American, either...
...The second argument is that even if America was right all along in its argument with some other nations, it would be pointless to drag the argument on precisely when the other side is dropping its case...
...But some dogmas are just beyond discussion, and some questions are off limits...
...forces to use German facilities...
...AFP, France's flagship press agency, explicitly depends on state tutelage...
...Such is the case with anti-Americanism, a very convenient tool that brings together right-wing nationalists, in the Gaullist or Vichy tradition, with left-wing, post-Marxist nationalists...
...He drew an estranged France back into NATO in 1995, and granted French support to American-led military operations in Bosnia (1995), Kosovo (1999), and Afghanistan (2001...
...it is still too high by the standards of the European Union...
...Another nice turn, indeed...
...Their cause will be helped if America doesn't embark on a global boycott of France...
...Seventy percent of the French members of parliament, either right or left, are civil servants...
...BY MICHEL GURFINKIEL Paris EVERYBODY in the world understood the war in Iraq was effectively over and Saddam Hussein's regime defeated when French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin said, on April 1 (of all dates), that his country was standing by "our allies, the U.S...
...It will be helped even more if America insists on redrawing the whole pattern of transatlantic relations...
...The French still love to debate, of course...
...And they may at times rebel against the state ideology, routinely referred to as "la pensee unique" (the "single thought...
...Republican congressman George Nethercutt is pushing, with some success, a bill to punish the "betrayers" through economic sanctions...
...The same, perhaps, holds true for nations...
...A prevalent view among marriage counselors is that problems must be recognized in order to be healed...
...However, I agree that the recent dispute was very serious and that it indicated a growing rift between America and many of its nominal allies or friends...
...But if it doesn't react at all, the problems that led to the Iraq-related crisis will grow again and spread...
...What is important, after all, is the restoration of American leadership, rather than further humiliation of bad guys who admit—in some small measure, at least—to having been bad...
...As a citizen of France, I certainly do not welcome this initiative...
...For a while, Chancellor Gerhard Schroder seemed as bitter as the French in his opposition to American policies on Iraq...
...The American victory in Iraq is now shattering "la pensee unique...
...Even the media are more often than not state-controlled or subjected to state influence...
...It comes as no surprise that the French state nobility has streamlined public opinion over the years into an ideology that strengthens its own legitimacy...
...The answer lies in the way France is ruled nowadays...
...For the first time in years, those French citizens who are not happy with sta-tism at home or anti-Americanism abroad have an opportunity to engage in a real public debate...
...A less arrogant, less imperial, more sophisticated America—a State Department America rather than a Pentagon America— might have been more successful in winning the full support of such NATO countries as France, Germany, Belgium, and Turkey, and of many other countries as well, from Russia to China...
...This is particularly true of France...
...and Great Britain...
Vol. 8 • April 2003 • No. 31
